


a study in imaginary numbers

by Lady Mondegreen (larkgrace)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexy April, F/M, Sex-Averse Asexual Character, Touch-Averse Asexual Character, also for blue being fluent in spanish swear words, warning for description of an anxiety attack btw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 20:49:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3664455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkgrace/pseuds/Lady%20Mondegreen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a legendary king looks down on the six of them—Blue, her raven boys, and Chainsaw—and asks, “What is your wish?” Blue and Adam step forward to claim the kingly favor before Gansey can say a word.<br/>Blue’s the one to recite the words she’s been practicing for months now. “I wish to save Richard Gansey III from what this corpse road has promised me—the thing that is supposed to kill him before St. Mark’s Eve of this year.”<br/>Glendower nods solemnly. “Very well. Your curse”—he looks pointedly at Blue—“is lifted.”</p>
<p>In which Blue can kiss Gansey all she wants, now, only it's a little more complicated than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a study in imaginary numbers

**Author's Note:**

> title based on the joke "My number on the Kinsey scale is imaginary."
> 
> anyway, YAY ASEXY APRIL, it's my favorite month of the year. enjoy!

When a legendary king looks down on the six of them—Blue, her raven boys, and Chainsaw—and asks, “What is your wish?” Blue and Adam step forward to claim the kingly favor before Gansey can say a word.

Blue’s the one to recite the words she’s been practicing for months now. “I wish to save Richard Gansey III from what this corpse road has promised me—the thing that is supposed to kill him before St. Mark’s Eve of this year.”

Glendower nods solemnly. “Very well. _Your_ curse”—he looks pointedly at Blue—“is lifted.”

And oh, what a world of possibility that opens up.

*#*#*

For Blue, kissing Gansey is a lot like the first time she ever got drunk with Maura and Calla and Persephone. At first she feels nothing but the thrill of doing something so _forbidden,_ so _tantalizing,_ something whispered about by her classmates but never experienced. It’s a glorious rush to feel the blood thundering through her veins as Gansey kisses her. She can taste him like sweet wine on her tongue and she wants to drink him in forever. Gansey, too, seems drunk on _her,_ cupping her face in his hands and running his fingers through her hair and whispering _Blue, Blue,_ her own name spilling from his mouth into hers. She feels giddy.

Then his hands slide down to her hips and his mouth slides against her neck and she starts to feel like she did half an hour into getting drunk with Maura and Calla and Persephone: unbalanced and a little sick, the pleasure being washed away by an overwhelming feeling of _wrongness._

She places her hands firmly on Gansey’s shoulders and says, “Stop.”

He does, looking up at her through his eyelashes with his brows drawn together quizzically.

“We’re being antisocial,” she tells him, jerking her chin to where Adam and Ronan have shut themselves into Ronan’s room, although she suspects that since Noah is hiding out in his old room instead of with Ronan and Adam that they’re being just as antisocial as she and Gansey are.

“Of course, Jane,” he says, and raps his knuckles against the desk that Blue has been sitting on for the past—well, however long. “Would you like to choose a movie?” he asks, gesturing towards a teetering pile of DVD cases.

She squints at the titles. “Indiana Jones?”

Gansey’s smile could probably light up a city block. _“The Last Crusade_ is my favorite,” he says, and starts digging through the stack while Noah peers out through his cracked door.

When Blue had been laying on the reading room couch trying to steady her spinning head, Calla had told her that wine was an acquired taste, and Maura had told her that now she’d been drunk underage once it wasn’t going to happen again, at least without responsible adult supervision, _right Blue?_

Maybe kissing Gansey is like wine, she thinks. She has to get used to it.

*#*#*

Over the next month and a half, Blue gathers ample data for her study of kissing Gansey. She graduates from Mountain View (honor roll student and top of her class in Environmental Sciences) and Gansey graduates from Aglionby (with honors, to no one’s surprise) and the two of them spend their free time running around Cabeswater and taking late night drives and generally not acting like the sensible teens that their school administrators thought they were.

After she gets home from a night stargazing on the hood of the Pig, Blue makes a list of her findings.

  1. _Gansey has a very nice mouth._
  2. _Gansey has very soft hands._
  3. _I enjoy having Gansey’s mouth and/or hands touching my face._
  4. _Gansey’s mouth and/or hands touching anything below my neck is considerably less enjoyable._



At the bottom of this list of findings, she writes a question:

_What is wrong with me?_

She tears the list out of her journal, stuffs it under her mattress, and decides that tomorrow, she’ll start her research.

*#*#*

Blue does not start her research the next day, because she gets called in last minute to pick up a shift at Nino’s.

She does not start her research the day after that, either, because she and Gansey and Ronan and Adam decide to visit the Barns and Ronan’s lovely dream mother. Gansey lets her climb on his shoulders to pick fresh fruit from the trees and Ronan shows them a steep hill wet from the recent rains and Adam finds a shed full of perfectly functional bikes and Blue introduces the boys to the wonderful recreational activity of _mudding._

“I can’t believe _none_ of you have ever gone mudding before,” Blue says as they towel off the worst of the muck in the mudroom while Aurora shows Matthew how to cook chili.

“Not all of us enjoy rolling around in filth, Maggot,” Ronan says, and then gags when Gansey swipes a bit of mud off her face and kisses her nose. To be fair, Blue usually doesn’t enjoy rolling around in filth, but there’s something supremely satisfying about seeing self-contained Adam and golden boy Gansey whoop with delight while they skid down a steep hill and splatter each other with dirt.

Their clothes are dirty but not ruined, so while the clothes go through a wash cycle Ronan and Gansey dig a pile of spare clothes out of a closet somewhere and everyone settles down to a table full of chili and crackers and hot roast beef sandwiches, thanks to Matthew’s cooking lessons. Even Matthew’s smallest spare shirt swamps Blue, and Gansey keeps resting his hand on the spot where the too-large neck exposes her bare shoulder. Gansey’s borrowed muscle shirt shows off his broad rowing shoulders, and Ronan smirks at her noticing.

She’s not sure how to respond to the wordless teasing. She was just looking at the comical contrast between Gansey’s sun-bronzed arms and his pasty shoulders, and the bright line where the sleeves of his polo shirts usually end.

An uneasy feeling settles low in the pit of her stomach, the same one she got back when she first met the boys. Like there’s some sort of joke being told and she’s the only one in the room who isn’t in on it.

*#*#*

Adam and Gansey leave for a visit to the Gansey Estate the next day, and with no Adam around Ronan is off moping or breaking the speed limit (or, more likely, both) and Blue had to stay behind to help with an important reading in the morning, so it’s just Blue and Noah in Monmouth Manufacturing the next afternoon. Blue’s grand plans to actually buckle down and get some projects done in Monmouth’s quiet fall apart when the door opens and Noah assaults her with a pillow. Laughing, she drops her messenger bag by the door and sprints to grab a pillow from Gansey’s bed.

Later, red-faced and giggling, Blue sets Noah to the task of gathering up the stuff that fell from her bag while she clears a space on the floor to start making paper roses (made from the pages of some library books thrown in the dumpster). She’s just stacked the last of the Glendower books on the pool table when Noah says, “Uh, Blue?”

Blue looks at Noah who is looking at the list with an embarrassed flush creeping across his face.

“Sorry,” he says, “I didn’t mean to pry, it fell out of your bag.”

Blue sighs and sits on the floor, leaning against the pool table. Noah sits next to her and places the list, folded again, on her knee.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.

Blue leans her head back against the table with an audible _thunk._ “I don’t know,” she admits. “I want answers. I just don’t know where to start looking for them.”

“Have you talked to Gansey about it?”

Blue shakes her head.

Noah knocks his ankle against hers. “Well, he’s a research nut, you know. If you want answers he’ll help you find them. And if he’s doing something that’s upsetting you…” Noah shrugs. “I’d want to know.”

“I don’t know how much I want to tell him right now,” Blue says. “I’ll…think about it, I guess.” Like she’s been thinking about anything else. “You won’t mention it?”

Noah shakes his head, his outline blurring with the sudden movement. “Not my place to talk about it. Don’t worry. Hey, did I see glitter glue in your bag?”

Blue grins. “Don’t say I never did anything nice for you.”

Blue curls up bouquets of paper roses, and Noah carefully paints the edges with glitter. They make enough for two paper wreaths—Blue’s actual project—and then keep cutting, curling, and painting until Ronan arrives.

“You realize it’s two in the morning,” Ronan says, not blinking when Noah drops a paper flower crown on his head.

“You should stay over,” Noah says. “It’s too late to walk home by yourself.”

Blue calls 300 Fox Way with the rotary phone—since Ronan doesn’t want Calla coming after him again (“I like my balls where they are, thanks”)—and takes off her jacket before burrowing under the sheets on Gansey’s bed.

*#*#*

Blue wakes up to a gentle kiss pressed to her forehead and Gansey saying, “Good morning, Goldilocks.”

Blue sits up and tugs a stray hair out of her mouth. “Hi. Wow.” She yawns, glances at the alarm clock with bleary eyes. “What time did you guys leave?”

“Too early,” Adam grouses. He drops a duffel on the floor by the door and lets himself into Ronan’s room, shutting the door behind him.

“I always feel trapped at my parent’s house,” Gansey admits. “It’s like I can’t breathe, it’s terrible. I like the flowers, by the way,” he says, nodding at the wreaths still laying on the floor. “Does the glitter everywhere mean Noah helped?”

“The herpes of the arts and crafts world,” Blue mutters. “He was here when I fell asleep.”

Gansey runs his hand through her sleep-ruffled hair, then down her neck to rest on her shoulder. He runs a thumb over the shell of her ear and murmurs, “I’m awfully glad to see you, Jane. I wish you could have come with us.”

“Maybe next time,” she says, and leans her head into the palm of his hand, her eyes closing. This. This is fine. This is a touch that doesn’t fill her stomach with lead. This is affection that doesn’t make her skin crawl.

“Some of my mother’s friends were trying to tell me about a wildlife conservation movement in Costa Rica,” he says. “I didn’t understand most of it. They mentioned the possible damage resorts were inflicting on—some volcano?”

“Arenal,” she says. “Still classified as active. No eruptions since 2010. Huge hit with tourists.”

“I told them you were far more educated on the subject than I,” he says, sounding proud. “My parents insist that I bring you next time. And of course, Helen adores you.”

Blue doubts that Helen can _adore_ her after one helicopter ride, but she thinks she can get along fine with anyone who teases Gansey as much as Helen does.

“I need to get home,” she says, and turns her head to press a kiss to his palm. “See you at Nino’s tonight?”

“Of course,” Gansey promises. “In the meantime, I think I’ll have a nap.” He pulls off his shoes and burrows into the blankets next to her. “Thank you for warming up a spot for me,” he says into a pillow next to her hip.

“Happy to be of service,” she says, rolling her eyes, and gathers her art supplies. She considers saying good-bye to Adam and Ronan, thinks better of it, then lets herself out to carry her paper wreaths home.

*#*#*

Gansey, Ronan, Adam, and Noah show up near the end of her shift, which also means near closing, when the restaurant is almost empty. She can take her time chatting as she tops off their drinks and brings extra orders of breadsticks, and when she’s busy across the floor she can watch Gansey gesticulating wildly while he talks and Noah chewing on a straw and Ronan and Adam leaning into each other silently.

_My boys,_ she thinks happily, and her smile when she goes to escort an old couple to their table is genuine.

Unfortunately, by the time the restaurant closes forty-five minutes later, her incompetent manager and an asshole table together have managed to erode her pleasant mood, and when Gansey meets her at the Pig she swings herself into the passenger seat and asks, “Can we just drive somewhere?”

Adam and Ronan left together for the church, and Noah vanished into the ether sometime between departing Nino’s and Blue getting off work, so Gansey drives them to what Blue has come to think of as their spot overlooking the valley. The drive is long enough that her anger can diffuse into a tired, frustrated feeling that puts a bad taste on her tongue and weight on her eyelids. Her stomach curls uneasily when he places his hand over her knee and she shrugs him off, leaning her head against the cool glass of the window. Her skin crawls at the thought of being touched.

Gansey places his hand back on the gearshift, then into his own lap. He hangs his head to stare at his own fingers. “I’m sorry, Blue,” he says.

“It’s not you, Gansey,” she mumbles. “Really.”

She sees his shoulders curl in and hears his bark of bitter laughter. “Right. ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ Are you sure we haven’t somehow been transported into a bad chick flick?”

The still air inside the Pig is stifling. “I need air,” she says, and flings the door open. “Come with me.” She doesn’t look to see if he follows, but she climbs out of the Pig and makes her way around the front of the Camaro to sit on the grass overlooking Henrietta. She pulls off her shoes and socks and rolls her leggings up past her knees, presses her bare legs against the grass blades. Their touch is cool, gentle, inhuman, relaxing.

After a moment, she hears the driver’s side door open and close, and Gansey sits beside her, a wider-than-friendly gap between them.

“I feel as though I’m always upsetting you lately,” Gansey says, “and I don’t know exactly what it is that I’m doing wrong. Can you tell me?”

Blue reaches into her skirt pocket and takes out the piece of paper from where it’s been folded all night. She’s been carrying it with her since she left Monmouth that morning.

“A list,” Gansey says, “oh, wonderful. I didn’t realize I was that awful.”

He’s trying to make a joke but Blue takes it like a punch to the gut. “You haven’t done anything wrong,” she says. “Just. Please. Read it.”

He takes the list from her and reads it slowly. Blue watches from the corners of her eyes as his eyebrows furrow together and he traces the last sentence with his fingertips.

“’Considerably less enjoyable,’” he finally says. “Would you mind clarifying?”

She brings her knees up to her chest and rests her forehead against them. “I feel itchy. Sick. Bothered. Upset. I don’t know why.”

“How often?”

He’s not angry, she can tell. More like…appalled. Knowing Gansey, appalled at himself for not picking up on what she’s been so desperate to hide. “Not all the time,” she says. “Kissing is fine, mostly. Holding hands is okay. Cuddling is okay. But—things like trying to touch my back, or hold my waist, or kiss my neck, I get so uncomfortable. It’s like I want to crawl out of my skin.”

She takes a deep, shaky breath. “And then sometimes I can’t stand being touched at all. If Mom pats me on the shoulder I feel like I’ll throw up. I can’t even _think_ about—“ if she says _kissing_ again she might actually faint, so she substitutes with “—touching you when I’m like that. It can last a few minutes or a few hours or a few days.”

“Do you feel like that right now?”

She nods. Her entire body feels overheated. She wants to crawl into a cold, mirror-smooth lake and never come out.

“Oh, Jane,” he says, and he sounds so, so sad. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. What can I do?”

She digs her fingers into the grass. “I want to know why,” she says. “Why I feel like this.”

“I can help you find out,” he says.

“And I want to get out of here,” she says, yanking her socks back on.

Gansey holds up the keys to the Pig. “Let’s go.”

Before he climbs back in the driver’s side, she says, “Gansey?”

He turns to look at her, his ruffled hair falling over one eye.

“Thank you,” she says. “For listening.”

He gives her a shaky smile. “You know I’m always happy to talk to you.”

“No,” she insists. “Earlier. When I pushed you away. That’s listening too.” He glances at the ground, uncertain, and she tells him, “No matter what you seem to think, sometimes you’re a very good listener.”

*#*#*

Gansey really does have a talent for research, and after a few minutes of Googling on his phone in the Monmouth parking lot he tilts the screen to show her a web page. _“Hypoactive sexual desire disorder,”_ she reads slowly. “Characterized by a lack or absence of sexual fantasies or desire for sexual activity. Must cause marked stress or interpersonal difficulties.”

“From what you’ve told me, this is the first thing I came up with,” Gansey says.

Blue frowns. The definition is, in fact, exactly what she’s written out on her list of facts, but something doesn’t sit right. “What do they mean by _marked stress?”_ she asks. “That’s some really ambiguous phrasing. Kind of a shitty definition.”

Gansey locks his phone. “You’re right. I’ll have to look into it more.” He slips the phone into his pocket. “Would you like a ride home?”

“No thank you,” she says. “I want to walk tonight.” She says _want_ but thinks _need._ She needs the cool night breeze to brush the crawling sensation from her skin, to replace the molten lead in her lungs with fresh air.

“You’re sure you’ll be safe?” he asks.

She taps the hidden pocket in her skirt where her pink switchblade sits. “Armed and dangerous. I’ll be fine.”

Gansey cracks a hesitant, lopsided smile. “When you say ‘armed and dangerous,’ you _do_ mean your knife and not your sarcasm?”

“Asshole.” She punches his shoulder gently. Then, because he still looks afraid of her, afraid he’s done something wrong, she leans across the center console and hugs him, burying her face in his neck. He stiffens in surprise but slowly winds his arms around her back. She ignores the uncomfortable shivers on her spine and turns her head to kiss his cheek.

She lets herself out of the Pig and walks home, enjoying the feel of the wind sweeping away the burning discomfort from her body.

*#*#*

Blue knows that it’s nearly impossible to keep a secret in a house full of psychics, especially when the secret is causing such extreme emotional turmoil for her. She leaves the house the next morning with no real plan beyond avoiding another day of pitying glances.

Noah is waiting for her on the front walk, holding a handful of blue flowers. “Ronan dreamed them,” he says, holding them out for her. “But he already has more dream stuff than he wants and Adam prefers practical gifts, I guess, and Gansey doesn’t like keeping flowers because, you know, bees.”

“So what, I was his third on his list of gift recipients?” she asks, taking the flowers and holding them up to her nose. They smell lovely.

“No, I was,” Noah says. “But you were first on _my_ list. Do you want to get gelato?”

The responsible adult part of Blue insists that it’s far too early in the day for sugary treats, but they go out for gelato anyway. Noah picks a different flavor for her to try every time they come—today’s is black tea—she eats slowly and Noah holds her cup in his icy hands so the gelato doesn’t melt.

Halfway through her dish, Noah says, “So, you talked to Gansey about it.”

She swallows her spoonful and says, “If we’re being specific, he brought it up first.”

“He went to the library first thing this morning,” Noah says. “And he stayed up pretty late last night reading, but I don’t think Anglo-Saxon poets talked a whole lot about not wanting to make out with their boyfriends.”

Blue snorts and raps Noah’s knuckles with her spoon. “Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Do you think Iolo Goch wrote about wanting to make out with Glendower?” Noah says.

“’Dear Diary: today the king looked at me and I almost fainted,’” Blue says.

Noah clutches the front of his sweater. “Did senpai notice him?”

“What?” Blue asks, and they both start laughing so hard that the manager gives them dirty looks.

*#*#*

Blue and Noah walk back to 300 Fox Way together, Noah’s arm slung around her shoulders. Gansey pulls up in the Pig right as they reach the front walk. Noah waves with his free hand and Blue wiggles her fingers at the car as Gansey climbs out, clutching a stack of printouts in one hand and a half-eaten parfait in the other.

“Hello, Jane, Noah,” Gansey says, sounding excited in the same way he used to get when a new piece of Glendower information would turn up. He can’t juggle his papers, food, and keys at once, so Blue liberates him of the parfait and starts eating the granola bits, carefully picking around the fruit. She knows Gansey won’t mind; he hates the taste of granola. “I’ve found something interesting about—the thing we were discussing, Jane,” he says, cutting a nervous glance at Noah.

“He already knows,” Blue assures him.

“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” Gansey says. “Noah, would you like to join us?”

Noah shakes his head, a little morose. “I won’t be able to hang around much longer.” As if on cue, his outline flickers.

Blue hugs him tight, squeezing his torso as best as she can squeeze something that technically doesn’t exist on the physical plane, and Noah pats her wonderfully-spiked hair twice. Then she and Gansey make their way towards the house. When she turns around, the sidewalk where Noah was standing is empty.

Blue leads him to the beech tree in her backyard, because there are entirely too many clairvoyants inside her house to have a private conversation, and at least out here she can pretend no one can overhear. As soon as Gansey sits he’s flipping through his papers and talking a mile a minute.

“So I did a lot of reading about hypoactive sexual desire disorder, and the gist of what I found outside of just the clinical definitions is that HSDD has actually been criticized by several activism groups for almost a decade now because—well, do you want the short version or the long version?”

Blue swallows. “Medium?”

“Hmm. Okay, the thesis statement is that HSDD is, scientifically speaking, an absolute load of horseshit, for a lot of reasons, chief of which is that the definition actually contradicts itself—HSDD can be lifelong, according to the DSM, but one of the qualifiers is that it causes stress, so if a person has always been disinterested in sex but only becomes distressed by it in, oh, their thirties, then they will have had lifelong HSDD without having had HSDD before that point, which makes no sense. Also, the two sex therapists who pretty much single-handedly introduced HSDD to the DSM were psychoanalysts—you know, big fans of Freud?”

“Um,” Blue says, “wasn’t he the guy who thought everyone wanted to have sex with their mothers and that everyone wanted to have a penis?”

“That’s the one. Most of his work has been debunked. Plus, there’s only been something like eight studies of HSDD and there’s no empirical support for its existence, so—I think at this point we can confidently say that you _do not_ have hypoactive sexual desire disorder.”

“Goody,” Blue says. “So did you find anything else?”

“Not so far,” Gansey admits. “But despite what math teachers worldwide like to think, trial and error is a reliable way to find the solution to a question. Keep eliminating wrong answers until all you have left is the right one. That’s one wrong answer down.”

Blue flips through the stack of printouts. “How many more options are there?”

“There were a few things that got mentioned briefly in the articles,” Gansey says. “You can keep those, if you want. I’ll keep looking as well. Do you want to come back to Monmouth to work on it together?”

She shakes her head. “I have work soon. I might come by later, though.” She clutches the stack of paper to her chest and leans her head against Gansey’s shoulder. “Thank you for this.”

He wraps his arm around her shoulders and squeezes. “It’s no problem at all. You know that.”

Blue sits there for a moment, leaning her head against Gansey’s shoulder, and then leans up to kiss the underside of his jaw, because she _can._ He jumps a little in surprise but then turns to smirk down at her, obnoxious American-war-hero eyes glittering. “You missed,” he says, and then kisses her on the mouth, presumably because he _can._

Gansey moves to stand, but just before he disappears around the tree Blue calls out, “Wait.”

He turns back to face her, eyebrow raised, and says, “Yes?”

She runs her finger over a crease in one of the papers. “I was thinking last night, after I left,” she says. “I don’t know if it helps, but it doesn’t upset me that I don’t want sex, or whatever.” She shakes the stack of articles. “Aside from getting sick, obviously. I think it bothers me more that I don’t know _why_ I don’t want it? It’s not the not wanting that’s bad, it’s the not knowing. If that makes sense.”

Gansey nods slowly, his eyes zeroing in on the horizon as he thinks. Blue can practically see the wheels in his head turning. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

He leaves, and after a minute of staring at the stack of articles, Blue gets up to change.

*#*#*

Blue didn’t get to sit down with Gansey’s articles until the next afternoon, because weed pulling at the Henrietta Retirement Villas had lasted longer than she’d anticipated, and when she’d gotten home that night she’d scrubbed the dirt from under her fingernails and collapsed into bed.

When she wakes up, Blue spends the first part of her morning dyeing a t-shirt with sharpies and rubbing alcohol; once she’s recovered from the fumes she eats lunch (yogurt and a turkey sandwich, turning her nose up at Maura and Calla’s butter-and-bacon monstrosities) and then settles down to read.

Most of the articles are just backing up the arguments that Gansey highlighted for her—profiles of the therapists, records of revisions in the DSM, reports from conferences about sexual dysfunction. Gansey has annotated every page with a nonsensical system of highlighters and colored pens that she assumes she’d have to get into his head to decode completely, but she sees where he references other articles in the margins.

She spots a highlighted acronym—AVEN—with a star next to it in the margins, but no further explanation, and the context of the article only tells her that it’s an online community of some sort.

She scribbles _AVEN_ on her palm in purple ink, then pulls on her boots and heads out for the library.

*#*#*

When she types _AVEN_ into the search function on the library’s computer, the first result that Google spits back at her is a website called _The Asexual Visibility and Education Network._

The website features a deep purple banner, with white letters that read _an asexual person is a person who does not experience sexual attraction._

Blue stares for a moment, then clicks the _learn more_ button.

When she leaves the library, her chest feels so light that she thinks she could cry.

*#*#*

That evening, Blue knocks firmly on the door of Monmouth Manufacturing until Noah opens the door. Without a word he pulls her into a rib-squishing hug and presses his frozen lips to her forehead. “I’m glad,” he says quietly into her hair. “I’m so happy you found your answer, Blue.”

“Thank you, Noah,” she says. Over his shoulder she can see Gansey standing at the pool table, where it looks like he’s in the middle of a game with Noah. He’s resting one hand on the edge of the table and the other on the tip of his pool cue and Blue seriously considers flinging herself at him in a hug for a moment.

She doesn’t. Instead, she smooths out her shorts and walks purposefully to stand directly in front of Gansey, her chin raised and her shoulders squared. “’Asexuality,’” she quotes, “’can be defined as an enduring lack of sexual attraction. Thus, asexual individuals do not find others sexually appealing.’ _Understanding Asexuality_ by Dr. Anthony Bogaert, Brock University.”

Gansey stares for a moment, then breaks out into a wide grin. “That’s it, then?” he asks.

She nods. “That’s all there is. That’s the answer.”

Gansey reaches out his arms, and now she hugs him. He peppers her face with joyous kisses, and she smiles now.

This is what it must have felt like for Gansey to finally find Glendower, she thinks. To find the answer to a question that you’ve been asking for so long that it’s become part of you. To finally remove the mystery from her existence.

*#*#*

Weeks pass. Blue and Gansey curl up together in his bed to watch movies on his laptop and cuddle. When Adam comes over all of them watch _Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail_ on the TV. In between jokes about a couple of coconuts being a more reliable steed than the Pig, Ronan falls asleep on the couch leaning against Adam’s chest with Adam’s arm around his shoulder. Blue leans against one arm of the other couch (Gansey having invested in enough seating to fit all five of them, finally) with her feet tucked under Gansey’s legs where he sits at the other end. When Noah flickers into existence halfway through the movie, he takes the seat between Blue and Gansey, with her legs spread over his and her feet in Gansey’s lap.

Gansey rests a hand on her ankle and Noah whispers to her “If it walks like a rabbit and it talks like a rabbit, does that mean it’s going to kill you?” and Blue can’t help but smile.

The next day Blue wakes up with fire ants crawling in her chest, under her skin. She jumps away from her mother’s touch and desperately dodges any accidental brushes in the hallways. When Gansey calls 300 Fox Way to ask if Blue wants to join him and the others on a trip to Cabeswater, she sighs at the thought of cool forest air on her skin.

But the inside of the Pig is stifling and Ronan is in the passenger seat playing horrible music and Noah is in one window seat, wedged underneath some energy detector propped against the door that forces Adam into the middle seat where he’s too close to Blue near the other door. She’s pressed herself tightly into the side of the Pig but Adam is still touching her, they’re pressed thigh to thigh and shoulder to shoulder and bicep to bicep and her hands are shaking.

Her stomach twists itself into a knot and her lungs start to close up as her throat burns fever hot and her heart thunders against her ribcage. She gasps for air and presses her face into her hands as the world spins.

“Blue?” Adam asks, face turned towards her and breath too hot and damp on her bowed neck. “What’s wrong?”

She can only jerk away, curling in on herself further in an attempt to escape the heat of his breath. “Gansey, pull over!” he says, “Let Blue out!”

“Jane?” Gansey says, and he sounds so worried, Blue can feel his eyes on her, and the Camaro slows as Gansey guides it to the shoulder of the gravel road they’re on. The car stops and arms are reaching past her to open the door and a hand presses her hip as someone unbuckles her seat belt. Ronan jumps out of the passenger seat and pulls it forward to let her stumble past and land on her knees in the grass at the side of the road, retching violently. She hears the scuffle of feet and feels well-meaning hands on her back, but she flinches away and snaps “Don’t touch me!” because she can’t, she can’t, she’s going to _vomit_ if anyone comes near her, she’s going to crawl out of her skin if burning hands touch her.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Adam gently tugging at Ronan’s shoulder—Ronan, she realizes in some small part of her, who tried to help her—and through the pounding in her ears she thinks she hears the words _anxiety attack._

Then Adam kneels in the grass in front of her, well out of arm’s reach, and says, “Blue, what do you need?”

She needs air. She needs icewater injected into her veins. She needs to lay face-first on a steel table and inhale the scent of uncaring metal. She shakes her head, two violent jerks.

“Try taking a deep breath,” he says. “Can you do that?”

It’s hard when her throat is swollen shut, but with effort, she can take a breath that fills the deepest recesses of her lungs, and exhale the stale air. She does it twice.

“What’s wrong?” he asks her again, and she still can’t find the words to describe the utter revulsion at being touched that licks across her skin like flames, but she manages, “Too hot.”

Another figure appears in her periphery, face drawn and more pale than usual. “Can I help?” Noah asks, and kneels a few feet away.

Slowly, shakily, she crawls toward him, and then cautiously into his lap. She presses her cheek to the spot where his skin pulls across his bony shoulder and crosses her arms in front of her, trapping them between Noah’s chest and her own. When he tries to wrap her up in a hug she cries out and shoves his arms, so he sits with his arms hanging limply at his sides while Blue presses herself to him. If she closes her eyes, she can forget that Noah is almost human and just feel the solid icy quality of him.

Slowly, slowly, she remembers how to breathe almost normally. The nausea becomes manageable again. Her heartbeat, while still too fast, is no longer making her entire world throb. She pulls away from Noah and opens her eyes.

Ronan is sitting on the hood of the Camaro, glaring at the complete lack of traffic on the dusty gravel road. Adam is kneeling where Blue left him, gazing across the fields at the horizon, and Gansey is sitting on the grass a few feet above him on the shoulder of the road, staring at Blue so worriedly that she has to look away.

“How are you feeling?” Gansey asks quietly. Adam blinks and turns to look at her.

Blue clears her throat. “Do we have any water?” she rasps.

Ronan slides of the hood of the car and reaches in through the driver’s side door to grab a water bottle from the passenger floorboard. He chucks it over the car and it rolls down the embankment to stop at her knees. She cracks the seal with trembling hands and takes a shaky sip that’s painful to swallow.

“Do you want to go home?” Gansey asks.

Blue shakes her head. “We were going to Cabeswater,” she croaks. “So let’s go. I’ll be fine.”

Gansey wants to argue, she can tell, but he thinks better of it and retrieves his keys. Her knees feel weak, but Gansey doesn’t offer her help, for which she’s grateful. Ronan climbs in the back with Adam and Noah, and Blue sits in the Pig’s passenger seat, her cheek pressed against the window and her eyes closed.

When they arrive, Cabeswater is humming with hot summer life; Blue blinks and when her eyes reopen the air is sharp and cold with thick drifts of snow in the ground and icicles hanging from the branches. She has never been more grateful for a sentient forest as she wades into a snowbank and flops onto her back. The harsh chill of the snow soaks into her clothes and freezes the fire ants crawling under her skin, extinguishes the fire burning in the back of her throat. She takes a deep breath and starts making a snow angel.

Ronan has always been Cabeswater’s favorite—Cabeswater’s Greywaren, Cabeswater’s golden boy. It’s impossible to forget how closely the forest is tied to Adam now, or more accurately how closely Adam is tied to the forest, like a marionette’s strings wrapped around a puppeteer’s fingers. Very rarely does Blue remember how Cabeswater cares for her, too. The psychic’s daughter. Cabeswater called her by name, once. When she closes her eyes, she thinks she feels the forest curling around her with branches like arms.

She sits up. Gansey and Adam and Ronan are all carefully not looking at her, choosing instead to stare at the trees or the sky or the silhouette of Aurora Lynch coming towards them. Noah stares at her. She offers him a hesitant smile, snow dripping from her hair and shoulders, and starts to scoop up a handful of snow and pack it tight.

Noah grins widely and forms his own snowball. Carefully they take aim—Blue at Gansey’s back and Noah at Ronan’s head. Both missiles meet their marks to spectacular results. Ronan retaliates immediately with a spray of loose snow launched at Noah’s face, which sails through him as Noah fades out for a moment, laughing. Gansey gapes, then bends down to start forming his own snowball. Blue scrambles to her feet and runs past Adam, deeper into the forest. “Come on, Adam!” she yells, because he looks a little lost. “You gonna help us whoop these rich kids?”

“I’m a rich kid!” Noah shouts at her, ducking behind a tree to dodge Gansey’s retaliation. “Technically!”

“You’re dead, you can’t be rich!” Blue tells him.

Adam takes a moment to look conflicted over being pitted against Ronan, then gets hit in the shoulder by one of Ronan’s snowballs. “Okay, yeah,” he says, and races after Blue. He takes to a tree to taunt Gansey, who can’t climb, and Blue and Noah take turns sniping Ronan, and she feels the giggles in her mouth dissolve the last of the fire in her veins.

*#*#*

When they climb in the Pig to drive back to Henrietta, Ronan lets her ride shotgun again. The ecstatic mood from the snowball fight melts in the stifling heat of the car, and Blue can feel four concerned gazes prickling her neck, but she’s fine. She’s fine. She can breathe, she can make it back to Henrietta.

Gansey drops her off at 300 Fox Way without offering to take her to Monmouth, which is good. She climbs in the shower and lets cold water wash away the dirt and sweat and lingering discomfort.

She sleeps in the next morning, and when she finally makes her way downstairs Adam is sitting in the reading room with Calla, pondering a spread of tarot cards. He must find whatever answer he’s looking for, because he nods and sweeps the cards into a stack.

“Hi,” he says, finally looking up at her. “Sorry to intrude, I was just leaving.”

“You’re not intruding,” she assures him, rubbing her eyes. “What’s that? Cabeswater stuff?”

“Not really,” Adam says. “I was just practicing. I need to get better at reading tarot if I want to strengthen the ley line. Oh, and I brought you something.” He reaches into his jeans pocket and pulls out something that lets out a metallic _clink_ as he closes it in his fist.

When Blue holds out her hand, Adam pours a long silver chain into her cupped palm, dangling from which is a heart-shaped pendant of tarnished silver. She can see miniscule holes drilled through the metal in a swirling vine pattern, and when she holds the necklace closer to her face to inspect them she catches a whiff of lavender.

“The necklace is from Ronan,” Adam tells her. “I got the lavender from Jimi. I thought it might…we figured you might like it.”

Blue slides the chain over her head. The necklace drops inside her oversized sleep shirt, and the pendant falls at the bottom of her ribcage. When the metal makes contact with her skin, a pleasantly cool sensation spreads across her skin, like sliding into a pool of water on a hot day. The lavender wafts up to her nose and relaxes her muscles.

“It’s wonderful,” she tells Adam. “Thank you.” She reaches out to hug him.

He returns the hug, then says, “I have to get to work. Hey, before I leave, can I try a reading on you?”

“Sure,” she says. He hands her the tarot deck and she shuffles, cutting the deck and handing it back to Adam. He fans out the cards and runs his fingertips over them, brows furrowed, before he finally chooses one. He flips it faceup to reveal the the Six of Wands.

Adam frowns. “Your card is the Page of Cups, though. This can’t be right.”

Blue considers that. The Six of Wands represents triumph, acknowledgement, high self-esteem. It means facing an obstacle and walking away with head held high.

“I think you got it just right,” she tells Adam.

*#*#*

Blue leans against the porch railing outside the hotel restaurant and tries her best to tune out the political posturing happening inside. Instead she focuses on the warm breeze rustling her skirt around her legs, the rough wood under her forearms, the unbelievably fresh air and the mist clinging to the top of the Arenal volcano in the distance.

Gansey appears at her shoulder, still looking neat in his suit despite the humidity sending droplets of sweat down her back. “It’s a wonderful view,” he sighs, gazing at the volcano. “Are you as sick of this party as I am?”

“Probably more,” she says.

Gansey’s mother had decided that she needed to do an ecotourism escapade to Costa Rica to boost political opinion or some such nonsense. When she’d told Gansey to invite one of his “little friends”, she’d probably meant Adam, but Adam was already signed up for orientation at James Madison University. So Gansey had shown up at her house with a plane ticket and a winning smile and a _sorry to bother you, Ms. Sargent, but I was wondering if your daughter could possibly accompany me on a short trip outside of the country for two weeks?_

Blue’s beyond ecstatic about being here, but the stench of schmoozing coming from inside is really putting a damper on her enjoyment of the fresh tropical air. Thankfully, she has no obligations herself outside of smiling nicely if she happens to get between Gansey and the cameras. So she’s spent the evening smiling at backhanded compliments about her _creative_ dress that she made out of floral fabric that looks like it came from Gansey’s grandmother’s couch and grinning genuinely when she remembers that in the morning they leave for Monteverde and a hike through the rainforest.

“Ronan would hate it most,” Gansey muses.

_“Ronan es un pendejo,”_ Blue says fondly. She wraps her fingers around the heart pendant and slides it back and forth on its chain.

“I have no clue what that means,” Gansey says, “but I’m going to assume it wasn’t nice and say you’re right. I think that Aglionby grossly overestimated the practicality of offering a dead language as the only foreign language option.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Blue says. Her Spanish is hardly fluent, but she can muddle her way through a conversation and she’s improving daily. It’s certainly impressive compared to Gansey’s stammered _pura vida._

“Of course, if you ever suddenly decide to study Classics at Oxford I’ll be forced to laugh at you,” Gansey says.

Blue responds with _“Chingate”_ and punches Gansey’s arm gently.

“Ow,” he mutters.

Well. Moderately gently.

They’re interrupted by a woman wanting to shake hands with Gansey and ask his opinions on the deforestation of the tropical rainforests, at which point Gansey directs the lady’s questions to “My girlfriend, Miss Blue Sargent; she’s going into environmental science and I’m sure her answer would be far more accurate than mine” and the woman suddenly remembers she has someone else she has to speak with _right away._

Blue fumes for a moment, and then Gansey says, “Can we ditch now? I’m starting to hate everyone here.”

“Please,” Blue grinds out, and Gansey takes her arm while they walk back to the freestanding cottage rooms. They share one, and Blue thinks that once they get inside she’ll kick off her shoes and Gansey will take off his jacket and they’ll watch dubbed cartoons on the hotel TV and maybe fall asleep leaning against each other. In the morning Mrs. Gansey’s guests will pretend not to be scandalized by her and Gansey sharing a room and Gansey will squeeze her hand under the table—or not, if she doesn’t want him too—because it doesn’t matter. They don’t matter. All that matters is that Gansey is here for her to kiss when she wants to and tomorrow she’s going to hike in a rainforest and she knows who she is.

That’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Ronan es un pendejo_ = Ronan is a(n) jackass/asshole.  
>  _Pura vida_ = literally, "Pure life"; a common phrase used in Costa Rica as a greeting, farewell, or general expression of happiness. Costa Rica has like 5 ways to say hello/how are you, including the standard _hola,_ plus _tuanis_ and _a cachete._ strangers shout greetings to you in the street all the time and it's amazing. i love costa rica.  
>  _Chingate_ = Fuck you/go fuck yourself.
> 
> this is roughly how i experience asexuality. it's different for everyone, but i consider myself sex averse about 50% of the time and sex repulsed the other 50%. i do experience time periods like blue where i can't stand to be touched, even platonically, although thankfully i've only had an anxiety attack once, and that was mostly self-inflicted because i was focusing a lot on my own discomfort.
> 
> also, yes, i have been mudding before because i am a small town hick. it is quite fun.
> 
> i hope you enjoyed!! ace blue is one of my favorite trc headcanons, closely followed by aro/ace noah. noah and blue are the cutest queerplatonic partners aliv--uh, wait.


End file.
